Matt Hancock’s presence catapults ‘I’m famous, get me out of here’ audience
British politician Matt Hancock has become the most famous of his profession in recent days by joining the contestants of a television show in which the public votes to assign them lurid tasks in an Australian jungle. Ten million Britons watched the show on Thursday evening, two million more than last year’s average.
Hancock’s arrival on the stage designed by the producers caused unanimity among the remaining eleven participants: “What is he doing here?” they wondered. In parliament, which continues to work and pay its salary, and in the apparent majority of the UK, the common question is, “What are you doing there?” The former health minister has tried to explain.
When it became known that he was going to “reality,” he pointed out that his desire is to promote recognition of dyslexia, a neurological condition that makes reading, writing and understanding difficult. Hancock, a brilliant student, was diagnosed as dyslexic at the University of Oxford. He has introduced a bill in parliament for schools to assess their students and train teachers.
But when one of the participants in the program, the journalist and TV presenter Charlene White, asked him what he was doing there, the former minister went on a rampage. “Politicians are seen as people with a very strict way of being, but I am more human. It’s a way of showing that we’re human. And besides, I like adventure. He will charge about 450,000 euros for his participation.
Former international rugby player Mike Tindall, married to Zara Phillips, niece of King Charles III, did not believe him. “Cow shit,” he said to a group of participants who were chatting about his words. In another dialogue, Hancock stated that “reality” is “a powerful tool” that can serve to connect with “the new generations.”
John Crace writes in ‘The Guardian’ that “the last place a normal person expects to be real is a ‘reality show’.” Camilla Long, in ‘The Times’, wonders “why you need a ‘powerful tool’ to get your message across.” And sentence: “What we need are politicians who send fewer messages. We are not ignorant of who they really are, especially in Matt’s case.”
Matt Hancock is not popular. He told his wife and three children of the divorce the night he learned that The Sun was going to publish a photo of him and his lover groping in the office of the health minister. He was forced to resign for breaking distancing rules with people from other homes at the end of his controversial management of the pandemic.
The biochemist and business manager, Kate Bingham, who led the team that achieved the world’s first covid vaccinations with great success and without being paid for it, describes Hancock in her book about the time as a character ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’. She expresses anger that after advising her before the meeting, he accused her of incompetence before Boris Johnson’s cabinet. Maybe because he wanted to be Bingham’s team principal.
Neil Postman’s most famous book, ‘Having fun to death’, predicted in 1985 a gradual transformation of politics into spectacle, into ‘show business’, thanks to the television representation of ideas through images. Hancock’s adventure in the jungle is criticized by his colleagues, who may also be caught up in a politics that demands continuous ‘performance’.
Hancock is not the only British politician to have taken part in television shows. Former Liberal Democrat minister Vince Cable did it during a popular dance competition. The fame Boris Johnson achieved in a comedy show was essential to his political career. Former Speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow is known for his theatrical shouting during the Brexit debates.
His replacement, Lindsay Hoyle, will not go Hancock’s way. “I’m an MP. Am I going to run through a jungle eating kangaroo testicles? Absolutely not”. Hoyle leaves it to voters to administer justice, but the Conservative Party, which quickly promoted him to government as a young reformer, has kicked him out of the parliamentary caucus at the age of 44.
The adventurer is independent until the next election and his former colleagues can already punish him. Chris Heyton-Harris, the minister of Northern Ireland, a heavily charged post, has explained that he and his colleagues use the show’s app voice to subject him to the worst drinks in sadism’s grand show.
On Friday night, Hancock ate a camel’s penis, a sheep’s vagina and a cow’s anus. When asked by other participants about the circumstances of his divorce, he expressed another ambition, namely to be forgiven. In his constituency newspaper, the Suffolk News, a reader writes: ‘He gets what he wants. It’s all over the screens and in the spotlight.”
Source: La Verdad
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